Browsing by Subject "Acts"

This dissertation argues that, for Luke, universal witness belongs within a broader claim about the identity of Israel’s Messiah. Framed by Luke 24:46-48 (and Acts 26:22-23), the book of Acts narratively construes the unfolding universality of the Christian movement as the unfolding of the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The “Lukan Commission,” rooted in a prophetic promise, prefigures the role of Acts in narratively unfolding the identity of Jesus as πάντων κύριος (Acts 10:36).

Universal proclamation of salvation in Acts—implicitly by Jesus and explicitly by his witnesses—narratively realizes the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. Luke’s second volume reconfigures the narrative sense of “presence” and “activity” on the basis of Jesus’ exaltation to heaven and Lordship by the Spirit (cf. 2:17-36). Especially as the “word” spreads beyond Jerusalem and the Jewish people, the Lord Jesus’ influence on the unfolding of universal witness becomes pronounced.

Though the apostles receive Jesus’ commission, their outreach is generally restricted to Jews in Jerusalem. Not until the Cornelius incident (Acts 10:1-11:18) does the universal vision of Jesus’ commission (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8) intersect with apostolic witness, which is why Luke gives the episode almost unparalleled emphasis (cf. 11:5-17; 15:7-11). In this respect, the event proves paradigmatic for Luke’s coordination of christological identity and universal witness, establishing Jesus’ messianic identity as “Lord of all” (10:36). The full scope of Jesus’ identity is what participants in witness must discover in their encounter with the (ethnically) “other” (ἀλλόφυλος).

This theological breakthrough lies behind Paul’s outreach in the Diaspora and finds expression in the makeup of the Syrian Antioch community (11:19-26; 13:1-3), itself the basis for Paul’s outreach to Jews and Gentiles everywhere. In endorsing Antioch’s ministry, Peter, James, and the Jerusalem believers “model” for unbelieving Jews the proper interpretation of the salvation of the Gentiles in relation to Israel’s hopes (Acts 15). Jesus’ identity as universal Lord helps explain Paul’s “turn” to the Gentiles (13:46; 18:6; 28:28) less as a result of Jewish rejection than as a fulfillment of the Messiah’s work as outlined in scripture (1:8; 13:47; 26:23). The receptivity of Gentiles to Paul’s preaching provokes Paul’s Jewish audiences even as it models proper receptivity to the universality of Jesus’ Lordship. The present study confirms that for Luke mission is in part a means for expanding the witnesses’ comprehension of the scope of Jesus’ Lordship in light of God’s work among the Gentiles. Luke’s focus on the response of Jewish believers to this emerging reality in Acts reconfigures notions of χριστός in light of the (narrative) expansion of his identity as πάντων κύριος.

This dissertation examines those scenes in Acts where members of the church are banished, exiled, or displaced from the city, such as Acts 8:1, 13:50, and 16:35-39. It argues that Luke-Acts presents the church as a community of political exiles who have been exiled or banished from the cities of the Roman Empire. This narrative displacement prompts a response or solution, which in Luke-Acts is found in the community itself. Unlike other early Christian texts, which spoke of the church in exile from heaven or awaiting a city to come, Luke-Acts portrays the church itself as this “new city” that becomes a refuge for the displaced believers. Furthermore, exile or homelessness in Luke-Acts is not a problem requiring an otherworldly solution, but a part of the new way of life engendered by the proclamation of the gospel—it is a core part of following the way of Jesus, who himself is exiled from Nazareth in the gospel of Luke.The primary methodology I employ is literary criticism, by which I mean a careful, contextualized reading of Luke-Acts that attends to the form and content of the entire narrative. My reading of Acts is also a contextualized reading, by which I mean a reading that seeks to understand Acts in its late first-century context. This is especially important when talking about exile, since the study of exile in the New Testament has primarily focused on Israel’s exile without an adequate understanding of the socio-historical and literary reality of exile in the first century. To remedy this, I primarily read Luke-Acts alongside the consolatory literature of Plutarch, Musonius Rufus, and Favorinus. These texts address the problem of exile from different perspectives, but they all address the common themes of the loss of one’s homeland, the loss of possessions, and the loss of free speech or παρρησία. By reading Acts alongside these texts, which provide their own alternative visions of political belonging in the face of exile, I show how Luke-Acts envisions a new form of political belonging in local communities centered around the gospel.

In this dissertation, I offer a pedagogical proposal for learning the Christian Scriptures guided by respect for the nature of the reader and the integrity of the biblical text. Christian educators have profitably developed recent theoretical interest in the body’s role in human meaning with regard to worship and praxis methodologies, but the implications of this research for communal study of the biblical text merit further development. I make the case for adopting scriptural imagination as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Christian Scriptures. The argument proceeds through a series of questions addressing both sides of the text/reader encounter.

Chapter one considers the question “what is the nature of the reader and, subsequently, the shape of the reader’s ways of knowing?” This investigation into recent literature on the body’s involvement in human knowing includes related epistemological shifts with Christian education. On the basis of this survey, imagination emerges as a compelling designator of an incorporative, constructive creaturely capacity that gives rise to a way of being in the world. Teachers of Scripture who intend to participate in Christian formation should account for the imagination’s centrality for all knowing. After briefly situating this proposal within a theological account of creatureliness, I make the initial case for Scriptural imagination as a pedagogical aim.

Imagination as creaturely capacity addresses the first guiding value, but does this proposal also respect the integrity and nature of the biblical text, and specifically of biblical narratives? In response, in chapter two I take up the Acts of the Apostles as a potential test case and exemplar for the dynamics pertinent to the formation of imagination. Drawing on secondary literature on the genre and literary features of Acts, I conclude that Acts coheres with this project’s explicit interest in imagination as a central component of the process of Christian formation in relationship to the Scriptures.

Chapters three and four each take up a pericope from Acts to assess whether the theoretical perspectives developed in prior chapters generate any interpretive payoff. In each of these chapters, a particular story within Acts functions as a test case for readings of biblical narratives guided by a concern for scriptural imagination. Each of these chapters begins with further theoretical development of some element of imaginal formation. Chapter three provides a theoretical account of practices as they relate to imagination, bringing that theory into conversation with Peter’s engagement in hospitality practices with Cornelius in Acts 10:1-11:18. Chapter four discusses the formative power of narratives, with implications for the analysis of Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27:1-28:16.

In the final chapter, I offer a two-part constructive pedagogical proposal for reading scriptural narratives in Christian communities. First, I suggest adopting resonance above relevance as the goal of pedagogically constructed encounters with the Scriptures. Second, I offer three ways of reading with the body, including the physical, ecclesial, and social bodies that shape all learning. I conclude by identifying the importance of scriptural imagination for Christian formation and witness in the twenty-first century.

This thesis looks to Peter as a model of witnessing to Christ through the act of preaching. Its primary material are the speeches delivered immediately after the arrival of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, 3, 4, and 5. A study of the similarities those speeches reveals the basic components of Peter’s model: the involvement of the Holy Spirit; building the sermon on recent miraculous events; presenting a clear, concise, and consistent version of the kerygma; making use of Scripture as evidence; and finishing with a call to response. To apply Peter’s model to a mainline Protestant pulpit, the author utilized her observations in the preparation and delivery of a Christmas Eve sermon. The effectiveness of that application was measured through an anonymous follow-up survey and a comparison of January attendance with the previous year, as well as the author’s own impressions. Although the application of Peter’s model did not translate into a miraculous increase in attendance, the survey responses and the author’s positive experience indicated that it is both possible and beneficial to follow Peter’s example in contemporary preaching.

“Witness” is widely recognized as an essential descriptor of Christian life, in large part because of Jesus’ final words to his disciples Acts 1:8, and yet little agreement exists about what practices constitute Christian witness. Despite Acts’ pervasive interest in “witness” as the shape of apostolic life, no one has yet engaged its entire narrative in order to illuminate its portrait of “witness.” This dissertation fills that gap in Christian scriptural scholarship via cohesive and comprehensive narrative analysis that, following Acts’ lead, privileges a theological hermeneutical lens in order present the epistemic and political aims embedded in Acts’ vision of witness. In Acts, apostolic witness originates with God, and God’s character and power comprehensively shape witness as a communal life-pattern of integrated epistemology and politics that repudiates all forms of falsehood and violence and, instead, embraces truth, resilience, and creativity as exemplified in Jesus’ resurrection. Acts’ portrait of witness urges Christians today toward essential practices of truth telling as well as creative and resilient responses to injustice. This twofold exhortation offers both great encouragement and a strong corrective to Christians engaged in contemporary politics in the United States and beyond.